After We Clock Out Workplace Erotica #5
She let him, then pushed his hand away like she had hit a limit on tender.
Her phone lit up on the floor, half out of the bag.
Monday’s roster. The scheduling app pushing a notification at 3:51 a.m. like the night shift never ended. Rhea stared at the glow on the ceiling and did not pick it up at first. The screen dimmed. Lit again. Her last name next to inbound, his last name two lines under, same block.
She reached down, thumbed it open, and snorted.
“You’re on inbound next week,” she said. “I’m on the floor. Surprise.”
Cole looked at the light on her face. Soft for one second. Then the manager came back in around the edges, tired instead of sharp.
“I should go,” she said, and did not move.
“You can stay.”
“I know I can.” Rhea dropped the phone on his shirt on the floor.
The roster stared at the ceiling. “If I stay, you don’t get to think it means I won’t radio you like a jerk on Friday. If I leave, you don’t get to think this was a one-off I regret in the lot. I’m too tired to pick which lie is useful.”
Cole pulled the sheet over their hips. His hand found her waist again and waited to see if she allowed it. She allowed it.
“Stay,” he said.
Rhea looked at the dark window of a 23 year old picker’s apartment like it was another cage door.
“I’m staying because my legs don’t work,” she said. “That’s the official reason.”
“Okay.”
She put her forehead against his arm. Mean joke spent. Roster still glowing on the floor. His cum cooling on her thigh and on his sheets, and she did not get up to clean it off.
Dawn made his apartment look cheaper.
Cole woke to the stove bulb and the sound of Rhea finding her polo on the floor.
Twenty-three years old, hair down for once, standing in his room in underwear and work socks, squinting at the inside-out shirt like it had offended her.
The roster notification was dead on his floor. His sheets were a lost cause.
“You’re on inbound,” she said without looking at him. “I checked again. I didn’t move you. Don’t ask me to.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Rhea pulled the polo on. The manager came back in pieces: zipper of the pants, belt, the yank of her hair that did not work without the tie. She looked around his nightstand, swore under her breath, and found the black elastic next to his charger. She held it up.
“This is mine.”
“You can take it.”
She looked at the tie, then at him, 23 years old and already dressed like the floor, and set it back on the nightstand anyway.
“I’m leaving it,” she said. “If you throw it out I will not be tragic about it. If it’s still there Friday I might use it.”
Cole sat up. The ache in his body was the good kind and the work kind stacked. “Friday night shift.”
“You’re on it. So am I.” Rhea stepped into her boots. “I will still ride you on the floor. You are still going to be short if you stare at my mouth. I will still put extra pallets on your jack when I feel like it. None of that got softer because you came in me.”
“Okay.”
She stopped with one boot unlaced and looked at him for real. The mean was there. So was the 3 a.m. quiet she had not joked all the way through.
“Come here.”
He got up. She did not tell him to get dressed first. Rhea fisted the front of the sheet he had wrapped around his hips and kissed him like the cage, then not like the cage. Less teeth. Still not sweet. When she pulled back she kept her hand there.
“That happens again, you say yes in the room it happens in,” she said. “Not because I have a clipboard. If you say no I go back to inbound and I stay ugly in a professional way. Clean.”
“I’ll say it in the room.”
“Good.” She laced the boot. “I’m not introducing you to day shift. I’m not eating lunch with you in the break room under that camera. I’m not your girlfriend on a timesheet.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Rhea’s mouth twitched. “Don’t look proud of that either.”
She picked up her bag. The radio went into the side pocket dead. At the door she paused, looked at the hair tie on his nightstand, and did not pick it up a second time.
Cole followed her to the landing in jeans he had dragged on. The stairwell was gray. A neighbor’s TV already going. Rhea stood on his top step like she was about to radio a count.
“Friday,” she said. “East lot after we clock out. If I’m there, I’m there. If I’m not, you go home and you don’t make it a story on the floor.”
“Can I come to the lot on Friday.”
She almost smiled. Almost.
“Yes. Ask again on Friday.”
Rhea went down the stairs with a manager’s walk and a 23 year old’s mouth still a little swollen. Cole watched her hit the street and the gray Civic and the ordinary morning that did not know about the cage. She did not wave. He did not expect her to.
He shut the door.
The apartment smelled like her gum and his sheets and warehouse dust they had tracked in. The hair tie sat on the nightstand in a small black circle. Monday’s roster would put them on the same block. Friday’s shift was already on both phones.
Cole picked up the tie, put it back exactly where she had left it, and went to find a shirt that did not smell like the floor.
Inbound would start ugly.
He was going to be late if he stared.
He was going to stare anyway.
More heat. More filthy. Don’t stop.